richard Despite your average British tomato being a Dutch grown, prematurely picked, under-ripe, woolly, anaemic, flavourless, blemish-free and over-chilled orb of disappointment, it’s still hard to get a genuine green tomato in this country… unless of course you live in Yorkshire and grow your own, in which case they’ll ALL be green from lack of sunlight. So when I found a bag of (I assume intentionally) green tomatoes on our local veg stall, I couldn’t resist. As we tend to eschew the deep fat frier, we decided upon the baked rather than the more traditional fried offering.
And very tasty it was too.
Preparation time: 5 minutes
Cooking time: 50 minutes
Serves: 2 people
Skill level: Easy
Ingredients
- 8 green tomatoes – cut into 15mm slices
- Parmesan cheese – grated – 50g
- fresh breadcrumbs – 90g
- butter – a little
- fresh thyme – leaves – to taste
- Tabasco sauce – dash – to taste
- s & p
Heat oven to 175°C/Gas Mark 4
Cut the tomatoes into 15mm slices and toss together with a dash of Tabasco sauce.
Mix the Parmesan, breadcrumbs, thyme, salt and pepper in a small bowl.
Place half the tomato slices in the bottom of an oven-proof dish.
Sprinkle over half the breadcrumb mixture and dot with a little butter.
Layer with the other half of the tomato slices and top with the remaining breadcrumb mixture. Dot with a little more butter.
Bake uncovered for 50 minutes.
Verdict: A revelation. Never had green tomatoes before, fried, baked or otherwise. Slightly tart and firm like baked apple with a nice cheesy crunch from the topping. Unusual and excellent.
Drink: In keeping with the entertainment, it should have been neat Scotch* from a filing cabinet.
Entertainment: Gorged on the entire first series of ‘Prime Suspect‘. Cracking good drama packed full of smoking blokes wearing beige … the blokiest of all being the sinister, charismatic and ever dependable Tom Bell. Shame ‘Out’ is not readily available on DVD.
*’Bells’ obviously.
